SCAIOn Friday, March 24, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives decided to not proceed with a floor vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA) — signaling that repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will likely come after Congress considers other major priorities such as infrastructure funding and tax reform. While SCAI supports modifying and improving aspects of the ACA, SCAI was not supportive of the AHCA because the legislation would have had a dramatic impact on the ability of older Americans and other low-income individuals and families to afford, purchase and maintain coverage.

SCAI is hopeful that future healthcare reform efforts will utilize a bipartisan approach and work with multiple stakeholders toward strengthening our country's health care system so that all Americans can have access to reliable, high-quality and affordable healthcare. SCAI will be unveiling a set of healthcare reform priorities in the coming weeks.

SCAISCAI wants to send you the news and information that's most important to you! Please take a minute to review and update your SCAI member profile. Tell us your clinical interests, the best way to reach you and the information that you most like to receive. We'll take it from there!

SCAIModerate sedation CPT codes 99151-99157 should be used when administering conscious sedation for each procedure. These codes are primarily based on age (older or younger than 5 years of age) and 15-minute increments of time. It is crucial that one documents who is administering the conscious sedation and for how long; time is measured from the first injection to the conclusion of your face-to-face encounter with the patient.

TCTMDThe publication of another small-scale study on MitraClip use in patients with tricuspid regurgitation shows promise for the treatment, yet experts caution that more feasibility data is still needed. MitraClip (Abbott Vascular) was developed to treat mitral regurgitation and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to do so, but researchers have investigated its off-label potential in patients with tricuspid disease, suggesting that the procedure might be safe and effective in this population.
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MedPage TodayThe Achilles heel of stenting within the proximal left anterior descending (LAD) artery remains the higher risk of myocardial infarction , according to a post hoc analysis of an older drug-eluting stent trial, although what to make of the findings drew dissenting opinions.
The Randomized Study Comparing Endeavor With Cypher Stents (PROTECT) trial originally randomized 8,709 patients to the zotarolimus-eluting Endeavor stent or the sirolimus-eluting Cypher stent, among whom 29.1 percent had stents placed in the proximal LAD.
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PRODUCT SHOWCASE

Elevating The ExperienceChiesi USA, Inc., headquartered in Cary, NC, is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on commercializing products for the hospital and adjacent specialty markets. Visit www.chiesiusa.com for more information.

Healio In the first randomized clinical trial to compare optimal medical therapy alone with percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with a coronary chronic total occlusion, the therapeutic strategy was noninferior to intervention for the primary endpoint of death, myocardial infarction, stroke or any revascularization at three years.
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TCTMDRegistry data released earlier this week at the American College of Cardiology 2017 Scientific Session suggest that transcatheter aortic valve replacement in patients with bicuspid aortic stenosis (AS) yields results that are similar to those seen in patients with tricuspid AS.
Procedure success, however, is lower in these patients, with more needing to be converted to surgical valve replacement.READ MORE

HealthDay News via The Cardiology Advisor From 2010 to 2014 there was a decrease in the rate of inappropriate percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) performed in New York State, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Edward L. Hannan, Ph.D., from the State University of New York in Albany, and colleagues applied appropriate use criteria to PCIs performed in New York in patients with acute coronary syndromes or previous coronary artery bypass graft surgery before (2010-2011) and after (2012-2014) efforts were implemented to decrease the rate of inappropriateness.READ MORE

TCTMDBoth operators and patients are exposed to greater radiation doses during radial percutaneous coronary intervention than during comparable femoral procedures, according to results of a large, contemporary study of high-volume operators and their acute coronary syndrome patients.
Although the difference in radiation was relatively small for patients — approximately 10 percent between radial versus femoral — it translated into nearly a twofold increase in exposure to the operator's thorax.READ MORE

Cardiovascular Business Levosimendan, a drug used to prevent heart failure during heart surgery, was shown to not reduce adverse outcomes in patients at a high risk for low cardiac output syndrome in a new study. The drug, a calcium inotrope, is not approved in the U.S. yet, but is commonly used in many other countries. This trial is the first to examine the use of levosimendan before and after cardiac surgery and if it prevents low cardiac output syndrome and other adverse outcomes.
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TCTMDA hospital's PCI volume is not related to 30-day mortality after taking into account differences in patient characteristics across centers, according to a study conducted in England and Wales. The findings were consistent in the overall PCI cohort from the nationally representative British Cardiovascular Intervention Society registry, as well as in patients undergoing either primary or elective procedures, researchers led by Darragh O'Neill, Ph.D., report in the March 2017 issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.READ MORE